Political Bias At Brent Council

EDM number 1583 in 1994-95, proposed by Ken Livingstone on 03/11/1995.

That this House notes that the Leader of Brent Council, Bob Blackman, has instructed the Chief Executive of Brent Council, George Benham, to circulate a memorandum to all units of Brent Council, telling them that they should not 'invite Ken Livingstone to help officiate at official functions when Conservative councillors have to share the platform. There is deep embarrassment presently when this happens, and members are now refusing to attend these duties...'; registers its amazement that a supposedly politically neutral chief executive should accept such an instruction; regrets that this is the latest incident of bias in favour of the Conservatives by George Benham including falsely advising a Tory councillor that she would be at risk of surcharge if she did not support a school closure, introducing a bizarre system of voting for committee chairs in order to allow the Conservatives extra time to nominate and assisting in the cover-up following the discovery of Blackman's involvment in bugging conversations in a Labour councillor's home; therefore calls on Benham to resign; and further notes that Benham refer in his memo to 'the rather foetid of atmosphere recent months' and assumes t h is is a reference to the role of the local MP in exposing Blackman's ú75,000 bribe, using tax-payers' money, to Mr Brendan Mulkere, Secretary of the Brent Irish Centre, in exchange for his circulation of of illegal pro-Tory election literature in the 1994 borough elections.

This motion has been signed by a total of 12 MPs.